When the pop singer Pink took to social media to decry rapper Macklemore’s comments on Israel’s genocide of Palestinians — a slaughter that has taken the lives of more than 20,000 kids — she brought up her decadelong role as a UNICEF ambassador to show that she cares about children.
Now, a new petition signed by more than 160,000 people, including the backing of actor Javier Bardem, is calling for Pink’s removal from her UNICEF USA role. The petition organizers, Swifties Against Genocide, named for fans of the pop singer Taylor Swift, said that Pink’s remarks sidelined concern for Palestinian children and “fueled ongoing conflict and struggles for visibility and empathy.”
“As individuals who care deeply about the welfare of children around the world, we must hold UNICEF Ambassadors to the highest standards of neutrality and compassion,” the organizers wrote. “Palestinian children, like all children affected by genocide, deserve ambassadors who unequivocally extend support and empathy towards their plight.”
The petition is the latest example of the type of public pressure supporters of Palestine are seeking to exert amid a tidal shift of sentiment in the U.S. on Palestine and Israel over the past three years. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has dramatically soured U.S. opinion on Israel, with a majority viewing Israel unfavorably and more Americans taking a sympathetic view of Palestinians.
“UNICEF itself has called Gaza a graveyard for children. Its ambassadors are supposed to speak for those children, not attack the people who do.”
The transformations have played out in the current midterm election cycle, with candidates pushing to sever military ties with Israel winning in primaries across the country. In the past several weeks, the subject has upended mainstream popular culture, with battle lines being drawn over a stadium concert tour by pop icon Ed Sheeran.
The pressure on UNICEF to part ways with Pink is tied up with a strategy among Palestine solidarity activists to extract a price from Israel for its continued occupation and genocide of Palestinians.
For Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a policy fellow with Al-Shabaka U.S., the petition is “a clear attempt to draw a new line in the sand and make the point that choosing to take the moderate lane is unacceptable.”
“These past couple days have proven that being shamelessly pro-Israel, or even refusing to take sides in the face of a genocide, is no longer the safe route,” he said, citing a shift of the “cultural hegemony” in the West.
Though Sheeran himself — who said at his latest concert that he was listening to both sides — is not a target of Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions against Israel, the cultural backlash to his move to take Macklemore off the tour reinforced the logic of the growing movement, Natasha Lennard recently wrote in The Intercept.
Representatives for Pink, UNICEF, and Change.org did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Other advocates for Palestinian rights reaffirmed the petitioners’ aims.
“Pink should step down. UNICEF itself has called Gaza a graveyard for children. Its ambassadors are supposed to speak for those children, not attack the people who do,” said Raed Jarrar, the advocacy director of Democracy for the Arab World Now. “Whether UNICEF removes her or not, it’s time for her to step down.”
Attacking Pro-Palestine Speech
The controversy involving Pink kicked off during Sheeran’s show at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on September 4.
Macklemore, one of the opening acts, spoke out against Israeli apartheid and the genocide of Palestinians, addressing Jewish people in the crowd to say that criticism of genocide and the Israeli government “is in no way a criticism of you.”
After backlash from pro-Israel groups like the Anti-Defamation League — and perhaps more critically, pressure from billionaire Robert Kraft, the deeply pro-Israel owner of the New England Patriots and Massachusetts’s Gillette Stadium — Sheeran dropped Macklemore from his tour. Then came the backlash to the backlash, with other opening acts on the tour and even Sheeran’s backing band dropping out in solidarity with Macklemore.
Pink, the pop star who rose to fame with a string of hits in the early 2000s, waded into the controversy early on. After attending the September 4 show, Pink reshared a social media post from the group Stop Antisemitism that said Macklemore’s claims of a genocide were “false” and that concertgoers were owed apologies and refunds.
“I don’t need anyone fired, and I don’t need a refund,” she later wrote on Instagram, explaining why she reshared the post. “What I need is to be able to say, as a Jewish mom, ‘That scared me, and it scared people I love’ — without being told our fear is just propaganda, and without being told I’m somehow cool with genocide because I noticed?”
She added that the protest slogan “From river to the sea” and the use of the term “Zionist” have become “a slur.”
Pink said that “nobody should ever celebrate the death of a child.” She mentioned her experience as a UNICEF ambassador visiting children born in war zones. She “grieved every one of them, on both sides of that fence,” she wrote.
Yet Pink’s grief, or any celebrity’s, has done little to change conditions on the ground for Palestinian children. Just on Monday, an 11-year-old boy was shot to death by the Israeli military in one of Gaza’s apparent “safe zones.”
UNICEF, which operates in Gaza, itself reported that Israeli attacks have killed at least 300 children in Gaza since the so-called ceasefire agreement last October. Food insecurity and lack of access to clean water also remain issues due to Israel’s blockade on humanitarian aid from entering the Strip.
In her social media post, Pink said she does not speak for Israel but reiterated her stance that “Hamas is a terrorist organization. Palestinians deserve a future that honors their humanity and their aspirations.” She said she was not “going to litigate a complex war in an Instagram caption, and I’m not going to recite anybody’s slogan to earn back a follower.”
Over the weekend, the petition calling out Pink also drew the support from Javier Bardem, an outspoken advocate for Palestine and major funder of the Palestinian film “All That’s Left of You,” who shared the petition on his Instagram profile.
“She can not defend children’s rights,” Bardem said, “while not condemning the genocide in Gaza.”
